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R&D Test Systems – Pushing the Boundaries of Test Rigs for Massive Wind Turbine Equipment
Allen Hall and Joel Saxum go in-depth with R&D Test Systems Chief Engineer Claus Beck, who reveals the innovation behind their massive test benches capable of rigorously vetting the next generation of multi-megawatt turbines. From building test rigs for machines that don’t yet exist to creating 25MW powertrain test stands, R&D is enabling wind OEMs to thoroughly validate their radical new designs. You’ll be blown away by how critical R&D’s capabilities are for scaling up turbines. This is one episode you won’t want to miss – the thrill of engineering big things to power the future!
Visit https://www.rd-as.com/ to learn more!
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Allen Hall: Pushing the boundaries of innovation often requires testing the limits of today’s technologies. That’s where R&D Test Systems comes in. Over 15 years, this leading test equipment developer has provided cutting edge testing technology to help wind energy companies launch the next generation of products.
From their powertrain test benches to their rain erosion test facilities, R&D Test Systems has built an impressive array of testing capabilities. Their expertise allows clients to validate designs, benchmark performance, troubleshoot issues, and certify products for safety and standards compliance. On this special episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, Joel Saxum and I will be talking with Claus Beck, Chief Engineer at R&D Test Systems, about the amazing technology they have created and have in their development pipeline.
Claus, welcome to the program.
Claus Beck: Thanks a lot, Allen and Joel.
Allen Hall: Well, the wind industry has a massive problem ahead, as I see it. As wind turbine sizes continue to scale exponentially, there appears to be limited ways to test this equipment to demonstrate lifetimes. And most recently, we’ve seen some OEMs announce this, that they have issues with thoroughly testing complete systems before they get placed in service.
Are you seeing some of these same issues and what are you hearing from the test equipment side?
Claus Beck: Yeah, so it’s of course, something we hear of that there are difficulties in this field and because of the cost of, Taking a turbine down in the wind field or in a North shore let’s say a platform, then that would create a lot of cost.
And because of that, then you need to test. And that’s also a really a focus point for all big OEMs that we are dealing with.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it does seem as the offshore wind turbine sizes have grown so fast where we’ve gone from even during the development phases, we’ve gone from like a 10 megawatt machine to now we’re talking about upwards of 20, maybe 22 megawatt machines.
That’s a huge issue because I think as we’ve, even on blade sizes, and you guys do work with blades also, the blade lengths have, the new blade lengths have created issues that they have might, may not have seen before. So there’s some unknowns out there until you actually test something as massive as a 20 megawatt machine.
And does that, how does that drive you? I mean, what are your thoughts when you see a new announcement of a 22 megawatt machine, what are you thinking about that as these new machines are announced?
Claus Beck: Yeah, so it calls, it implies a lot of difficulties when you scale in this speed, which is the wind industries is doing so that, that causes some difficulties you there’s a lot of scaling loss normally when you design stuff, but these does not always apply and you have a lot of failure modes, which change when you scale to these sizes.
So that’s why we do these tests. Yeah. In order to predict and find, you can say, the errors before you go on on a wind farm with your turbines.
Joel Saxum: One of the difficult things that we talked about off air was the fact that you guys are designing the test equipment. That needs to be built for things that don’t exist.
So it’s we’ve got to figure out how to build a test bench for something that has never been built before, but we’re building the thing that’s actually going to test the thing that’s never been built before. So you guys have to really be on the ball.
Claus Beck: When we use bearings and all kind of, equipment, like big engines and so on, then they are driven by many times.
It’s driven by the wind industry, much of this technology, but the problem becomes a little bit and a big one when, the components are not developed yet because when we need to fatigue a bearing arrangement or a big generator, then we need something more a larger piece of equipment than it’s to be tested.
And in order to do that, we need to develop, you can say the big system. So always we are kind of put to the limit with these systems. So bearing arrangements are developed of course, based on a lot of experience and technologies within bearing companies, but we always need to push the boundaries and limits on many of these, so everything from, yeah, bearings, big steel shaft of several hundred tons. So it creates a lot of difficulties, both in engineering, you can say, but also in logistics. Same problems wind industry is facing when you need to transport these components. So in many cases, we also need to, let’s say, separate components into something where it’s, we can transport it because it’s just not doable.
Allen Hall: So in terms of the technology and the development you’re in the OEMs and the large component manufacturers have a need, they have an immediate need to evaluate their components. So I think they’re going to be driven more and more to demonstrate lifetimes, particularly in light of some of the things that happened over the last 12 months.
And they have to be coming to you for solutions to that. How big, well, how big of a team do you have first off in terms of the engineering staff and machinists and technicians?
Claus Beck: Yeah, so you can say in R&D, we are around 200 people, whereas I think around 170 of them are engineers. And the largest portion of this is related directly into developing new test benches.
So, so currently we are doing a large test bench for a set of wind power in Belgium. Also a validation test where we are, I think we were at maximum around 40 people at the engineering peak. You can say. So, of course it’s always scaled up and down towards when you had the needs for a lot of things to go through engineering.
And then when things are settling, then you can reduce the amount of people.
Allen Hall: Well, it’s an interesting problem to have, right? Because there is a huge demand for bigger generators and turbines and equipment. Where the OEMs can’t man those, they can’t support having a separate test division.
Most of them can’t do that. It’s not cost efficient for them to do that. They need to outsource it to someone who’s knowledgeable. And as an innovative as R&D test systems, does that then just, because of all the new development and the push for larger turbines, just bring a lot of demand at your doorstep to, to deal with?
Claus Beck: Yeah, it’s of course bringing a lot of demands and that’s why we need to stay yeah, ahead of all this and try to also. Think of new solutions that could maybe gain a good solution for a lot of our customers. But you can say by, we have a lot of experience for a lot of customers, but of course, we are not allowed to share the technologies and inputs, and we are not doing that, of course, but we will gather a lot of let’s say, good ideas on how to do smart stuff on our test benches, which of course, all our customers came from. So that’s also what you, when you work with us, you also get this and you can say. So that’s one of the good things about using a third party company like also you’re not an internal division.
So we are working with both. So, most of companies have internal divisions. Maybe we, we help scale these divisions or we work together in a combined let’s say yeah. engineering effort to find the solutions together.
Joel Saxum: I think one of the important things to touch on there as well is if you are saying an end user, if I am.
XYZ wind company and I’m choosing between two OEMs and one OEM. And this is just my brain, right? If one OEM tested the equipment theirself, they say, Hey, we tested our blades. Someone else might have certified them based on drawings and process and whatnot, but we tested our blades and how, so they’re good.
Or I have another company that’s like. Hey, we also have this third party expertise build our test bench and they put us through the ringer to make sure that our things work well, and then someone else certified them too. Well, that to me is well, all right, then you’re avoiding some kind of internal nepotism if you have someone else building your test rigs and, helping people along through that process of the actual testing.
So that’s a value add, in my opinion, to any outside engineering client.
Claus Beck: And in general, you could say the wind OEM would also have a better, let’s say, value of their turbine if it has been tested. So, that is definitely important and in general, it’s just shown that it’s important to test because the cost of downtime in, in the wind farms is just it’s not so good.
Allen Hall: We’re learning it’s billions of dollars at the moment.
Claus Beck: It’s bad business.
Allen Hall: I want to get into some of the technology you have developed because it’s fascinating to me. And I saw the Belgian efforts at some of the conferences. I think I saw that up in Sweden. I, some of the Belgians were there talking about the work you were doing for them.
And you were building a 20, you have built a 25 megawatt. Powertrain test bench in Denmark. And then you’re building, I think it’s something similar for Belgium, right?
Yeah. So, so you can say to some extent, so yeah, the first one was the one in Denmark which included this 25 megawatt drive motor.
So yeah, we couldn’t find this anywhere in the world. So, So we developed internally this star drive from scratch and did heat runs and test on prototypes. And so it’s thrown around in the air together with the load unit. So that’s why we had some difficulties in just finding a a standard product.
And besides that, it’s it’s a quite huge machine. So it’s 16 meter in diameter.
Joel Saxum: The scale of these machines, like I’m, I was looking at it. I was like, I was, and I’m squinting at my other screen right now. So anybody that’s watching on YouTube and I was like, those are people like, Oh my God, how did they build that thing?
Like the size of the rotors of these things. The first time you ever stand underneath one, even if it’s like a GE 1 5, you’re like, holy man, look how big this thing is. That’s nothing compared to a 10 or 15 megawatt machine. But now you look at these test benches that might be used for a 25 megawatt machine in there.
I mean, they’re like five houses, like strung together huge.
Claus Beck: It’s a 20, I think it’s around 21 meter high the test bench at the Lindø Offshore Renewable Center here in Denmark. So it’s very huge. And again, it sets the scale as we just talked about that, that when you need to break or fatigue something, which is already the extreme.
Developments in in the world on wind turbines, then you need to put something in even more extreme on the other side, because otherwise that would just break. So, but that’s the very interesting part of this this engineering you can say. So, so we always need to we come to the edge and we need to move it and develop these new test benches, and they are kind of a prototype, each of them, so we need to make sure they run for the first time and there’s only one shot.
Allen Hall: Lindø Offshore Renewable Center has this 25 megawatt drive stand to evaluate generators and I assume gearboxes and everything else attached to it and the electrical output of those generators, right?
There’s an electrical component to this, it’s not just mechanical failure. They’re looking at electrical performance.
Claus Beck: Yes. So you can say it’s a, it can run full power train. So including, so you starting from cut off the rotor, but then you have the first shaft and the main bearing arrangement and gearbox and the generator, and then the converter system connected to the generator, then we loop the power.
You can say between the converter system and our motor. So. We only feed in the losses you could say of the system. So making it, let’s say also very cost efficient. So we are not utilizing 25 megawatt when we run, only feeding in the losses of the system.
Allen Hall: That makes a lot of sense. That’s a smart way of doing it instead of having a big load bank and trying to get rid of all the heat from that’d be a massive effort, get bored of the ocean with that, so that does that then that.
Technology and the capabilities. Of the electrical and mechanical parameters vary from OEM to OEM or even gearbox manufacturers. Are they looking for specific kinds of failure modes that they know that they have seen in the past? Or are they running a full suite of tests to evaluate their components?
Claus Beck: So you can say, depending on the design, you could have a gear design. You could have a drive design where you don’t have a gearbox and the front shaft and connect the rotor directly to the drive. Generator, you can say interface here, you have different modes. You would like to, let’s say, provoke and try to to push.
So, so for each design, then the engineering department of each knows we, we might have some difficulty in these regions. So they would maybe try to push these boundaries. But on side of that, you would all always just have a, let’s say, a trajectory of loads from field. You would like to transfer into some, let’s say, accelerated load.
And they will be independent of design. So it’s just what you would experience in the field. So, all kind of, let’s say nominal scenarios where you have a lot of hours. And then extreme scenarios hurricanes, all kind of winds. Scenarios where you would arrows let’s say set ups in your controls, which could generate some let’s say very high rotor loads.
So, if you consider, for instance, there’s a pitch in moving where you suddenly start to let’s say pull in the turbine because of, misoriented turbine or something. So you need to, of course, make sure that it will not just break. Because you didn’t expect this scenario to happen, you could say.
So you need to make sure everything is proper.
Joel Saxum: Something interesting to me from a conversation we had was the fact that you guys actually, we’re right now, the conversations were basically focused on hardware. This is how electrically we connect things. This is how we test things mechanically. We’d build these massive rigs, but you guys also build software for testing as well.
And the interesting one for me was. The ability to virtually test against grid issues with the output from a turbine, right? So I think that was an interesting one.
Claus Beck: Yeah. Yeah. So you can say when you have a large wind farm and you connect it to the grid, then there are certain, let’s say error which could happen on the grid, which could be thrown against such a turbine park.
And if your software and your control systems and also the electrical hardware does not react in a correct way on these fall right through and all kind of errors, then you could. Let’s say that’s like breaking a shaft. Then you could also destroy your wind turbine. And so in order to check this, then you are running these script test where we can, we have test systems where we can say emulate the grid and send in these responses to the or errors to the turbine.
And then you check, If you react in the correct way on your turbine, and it can handle the arrows. So, it’s a significant part as well as similar to the mechanical testing, then it’s the electrical is very important. And for each country, you can say, then you have great coach. And you need to comply with those.
And for each of these grid codes, then you’ll have different testing scenarios you need to comply with. So these, this is also something we do here at R&D these grid emulators.
Allen Hall: Which is becoming an important part of the, sort of the electrification of the world at the moment, in Texas, we’ve had a couple of situations where the stability of the grid has been compromised because.
The solar mostly, but a little bit of wind the way that the turbines and the electrical equipment interact with upsets can be different between manufacturers and coming up with standards and Texas is talking about creating a standard for themselves at the moment, that is really critical to catch up front in the design phase of a turbine, because doing it post when the turbines are deployed is extremely expensive and creates a nightmare.
Claus Beck: So that’s really, and you could say. We have a field here in Denmark where you do let’s say onsite testing. So, reality test where it’s called where you run these turbines and then you also connect it to a grid. You need to wait for the right wind conditions and the right errors to come in.
So it takes some time. It’s still part of the test, but in order to accelerate the test. Then you’re doing these validation tests in parallel. So, so then you can run the test over and over again until you have made sure that your controls are tweaked to the right let’s say parameters and all your hardware is designed correctly.
So it’s a faster way.
Joel Saxum: So that would be like okay, so let’s dumb it down for people like me to understand. If we were to say we’re building a brand new car, say like a Ford, Chevy, whatever here in the United States are building a brand new car. And one way to test it would be to hand that car to I don’t know, one of the engineers and just say, hey, drive it every day for six months and see if anything pops up.
Well, that’s a real world test, but that’s not an accelerated test. That’s not going to find all the errors. And in parallel, you have other teams of engineers that have carbon copies of this car and they’re out there running it on a racetrack, putting 100, 000 miles on it, running it in 130 degree weather, putting it in a freeze chamber, bouncing it off of concrete, all kinds of stuff.
So it’s kind of like the same thing. Östrell would be giving someone that brand new car just to go and just go drive it, see what happens. And then the accelerated test, what you guys do, is in the background.
Claus Beck: I’m not so much into the details of this part, you can say. I’m more into the main test of the test bench, as you could say.
But to my understanding, then, it’s still a necessity to do the real life test in order to get approval, you could say. But this is something that is being worked upon. We have people here in R&D who’s working in these. These organizations to try to to mitigate some of these to make it. Faster to market, you could say but this is why grid emulation is very important to, to do the emulations in reality.
But do it in a controlled manner. But also the digital part, you could say, this is also a great focus from R&D. So, in order to test the things as much you can test on a computer. The better you can say, this is something that will take time and we are working a lot in it, but we are, let’s say building on you could say bricks on top of each other all time.
So, but you can say to make it simple, then you do these, hardware in the loop. You can try to imagine a kind of street where you want to test a motor before it’s running in the test lab, then you could actually do a emulation. So a computer model of the full motor. And then connect it to your controller for the motor and then the controller thinks it’s connected to all the sensors and all the inputs and then you do a very high level simulation model, which then predicts a lot of the, things happening in the motor, and then you can do a lot of development of on your, let’s say, controller prior to going to test. So this is also done in our, so sometimes you cannot put all the test equipment in. So then we do let’s say part of the test bench in a digital way and put it, let’s say, running in parallel to the test bench.
So the turbine is actually think it’s connected to all the other. Okay. Let’s say subsystems. So then you can verify even more of your system. You could say.
Allen Hall: That makes complete sense. It sounds like a lot of things that have been happening in aerospace lately to reduce costs, is to do simulations, emulations of hardware because it does give you a highly accelerated development cycle and saves, saves tons of money.
And speaking of development cycles, what’s on the docket at the moment? What are the new areas you’re being asked to look into in terms of test equipment on large scale wind turbine generators. Where are they driving you to?
Claus Beck: It goes very fast. You could say with turbines looking at just five years back, then we were talking about eight megawatt turbines, and now we’re talking 15, turbines.
So we, we take a, it takes some time to develop a test bench. So you can also say in that respect. When we need to give a test bench 10 years of, or 20 years of service life, then we need to really shake the crystal ball and look for what we expect from the future. So, and then this is it’s yeah it still goes fast.
You could say. Without saying a lot. So, there’s a lot of requirements for the future and they are still going upwards.
Allen Hall: So look for bigger generators in our future. That’s pretty exciting. And I, because you have completed a couple of tests sites and you’ve have these 25 megawatt test benches already in service, what are the customers saying back to you at this point, they got to be thrilled.
This is amazing.
Claus Beck: Yeah. It is. It is amazing. It’s you. If you’re just a little bit like big stuff or mechanical engineering or electrical. When you are at these sites just standing behind, beside it you’re just overwhelmed by it’s just, it’s very impressive. We even have people coming out and then, where is the test bench here?
But you need to look up, it’s right in front of you because the foundation was standing in front of it.
Allen Hall: It’s one of those it’s from an engineering standpoint. It’s cool, right? Can we just say that right now? The building big things is cool.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, yeah, it’s just cool. Yeah, it’s just cool.
Allen Hall: Forget about Legos for a minute.
This is cool. In Denmark, this is cool. Yeah.
Claus Beck: You can also feel it from all the colleagues here in R&D that it’s just amazing. So you’re always. Brought up with new tasks. So now we need to develop this. We need to double the size of this. So we need to, what can we do, but we’re already at the limit last time.
Yes, but now we need to move it again. So, so, but that’s very interesting, but it’s always based. You can say on very detailed engineering, because you could imagine that we cannot we need to make it work the first time. So that’s, of course, also what it’s setting the difference between us and an OEM.
So we, we are a little bit more allowed to use technology. Which maybe costing a little bit more because we need to push these limits. So we are not bound to series production when everything needs to be counted down to the smallest dollar. So, it’s we need to make sure it works and our customers are satisfied and they get what they need at the very end and get the tested the equipment out in the field.
So that’s kind of the essence.
Allen Hall: Well, the wind industry cannot grow without R&D Test Systems being out in front. All this new technology we want to have cannot happen unless there’s a test bench equipment and guidance and knowledge at R&D test systems to make sure that this, the new generation of OEM equipment actually works like it’s intended to.
So, for that we’re very appreciative, Claus of all the work that you guys are doing and the effort that goes into it, because if, when you do see it, and when everybody sees this video, you can go to YouTube and watch the size of these components we’re talking about, it’s scary. And it’s amazing at the same time.
So at the wind industry, applauds the work that you guys are doing.
Claus Beck: It’s really nice to be part of this. And it’s amazing. If
Allen Hall: a company hasn’t used your services, I don’t know why they haven’t, but if they haven’t used your services, how do they reach out to R&D test systems and connect with you
Claus Beck: Yeah, we have a homepage, so, rd-as.com. So, here you would find a lot of our services.
And you could say the wind industry is one portion. So we are also in, in aerospace, but you can say the main portion of our work is going into the wind industry.
Allen Hall: If you haven’t checked out R&D test systems, LinkedIn page, make sure you do that because there’s a lot of cool pictures and technology on there on their LinkedIn page.
So check that out also. Claus, This has been amazing. Thank you for taking the time to spend with Joel and me today. It has, we’ve really learned a lot and we’re continually impressed and we’ll see you down the road. I’m sure we’ll see you at the next conferences. We’re coming your way pretty soon.
So hopefully we cross paths.
R&D Test Systems – Pushing the Boundaries of Test Rigs for Massive Wind Turbine Equipment
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US Wind Unionization, Blade Weather Damage Insights
This week, we cover the unionization of Vestas technicians in Michigan, and research revealing significant blade damage occurs in short but intense weather events. At the Atlantic Shores offshore farm, an environmental permit was remanded by a judge. Dermot Wind Farm in Texas, also known as the Amazon Wind Farm, is our wind farm of the week. Register for the start of our webinar series with SkySpecs!
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: Before we start the program this week on March 26th.
At 11:00 AM Uptime sits down with Josh Goryl CRO of SkySpecs, and their newly appointed CEO Dave Roberts for an exclusive conversation in our new joint webinar series. You may have heard about Dave recently stepping into the role. Now’s your chance to hear from him directly and we’ll dive into what’s new at SkySpecs, the latest industry insights, and what their newest announcement means for the future of wind turbine inspections.
Wind o and m. And asset health management, so don’t miss it. Tune in on March 26th, 11:00 AM Eastern, and we’ll include the webinar registration link in the show notes. Up in Michigan, wind turbine technicians who perform operations and maintenance on Vestas turbines have voted to join the Utility Workers Union of America.
Marks the first Vestas wind technicians in North America to unionize. The 11 member group voted nine to one, so someone abstained obviously in favor of organizing and will become members of the UWUA local 2, 2 3, which also represents winex at DTE in Michigan. Now these workers are responsible for operations and maintenance on about 120 odd turbines, including MCE.
So Joel, this one’s a little unique and maybe ’cause it’s Michigan unions are really strong in Michigan, have been for a hundred years. ’cause the auto workers, and this seems like an outgrowth of that, but what is the relationship with Vestus in unions? Is that something that they have done in Europe quite often and this is just carrying over into the United States?
Or is this. An American move.
Joel Saxum: I think it’s an American move. If you look at the state of Michigan, like you said, auto workers are there. They’re heavily unionized. And because they’re heavily unionized and that state has looked at them as, they do well. It’s in good middle class incomes and, that, that’s driven some progress over the last a hundred years in Michigan. My, some of my in-laws are from Michigan and they’re boilermakers and they’re all unionized. And when they say get that union job, they’ve got it. They’ve made it right. So I understand the city or the state of Michigan and some of the ideas around there.
And I think that if you, in wind, if you were to pick a state that would’ve unionized first. Michigan would be at the top of your list probably. So I don’t think it’s a Vesta thing necessarily. I think this is a local Michigan thing, but I don’t also believe, Vesta is being a Danish company and they have, a lot of trade representation there from in all trades in that northern part of Europe.
I think that’s, it’s not abnormal to Vestas either. It’s probably abnormal to Vestas. United States Management, but Vestas as a company, eh, pretty standard thing. I’m curious to see what their package looks like, because now we’re in this era of IRA bill things, right? So we, IRA bills, apprenticeships, and white sheet wages and these kind of things to, to fulfill these needs for all these projects.
So I would. Be interested to see what the package looks like and what they’ve signed with or as a union to Vestas and to the people that you’re working for, to see if it aligns with the IRA bill.
Rosemary Barnes: What can you explain for non-Americans? What does that mean to have unionized in America? Because we have unions in Australia, but my understanding, like it must be incredibly different here than it is there.
’cause like you say, it could be, you can have a union job, like I’m pretty sure in Australia, like you are. There’s no such thing as a union job. They can’t I think they’re explicitly prohibited from discriminating based on whether you are in a union or not. Everyone has a right to join a union, but, what does a union job mean? And Yeah tell those of us who aren’t from America. What does this actually mean?
Joel Saxum: It’s different depending on the organization, the industry, the area, right? So technically same thing. It’s not, it’s, it is illegal to technically discriminate against non-union or union, however, they become such a strong presence that when, if you’re part of the union and you. Say there’s a strike going on, and then you cross that picket line, like you will be ostracized from that group of people, even though it’s technically illegal to do they’re not sanctioned by the government.
It’s all independent organizations, but they have a lot of power, the auto workers unions and stuff, like if they go on strike, they shut down gm, they shut down forward, they can’t do anything. So they have a, an insane amount of power. And it, it rolls over into, when I say good union jobs, they have good packages.
In my opinion, I’ve seen some union packages that are just crazy, right? Like I was working in Chicago and there was guys that were holding shovels clearing, clearing off manholes, and they were making $48 an hour because they were in the union. And the guy next to him that wasn’t in the union, that wasn’t working for the union company was making like 16.
And doing the same work except for after eight hours he was still working. The other guy put a shovel down one home. So there’s a give and take.
Phil Totaro: Yeah. But that’s the flip side of this as well, which is okay, there’s a benefits package that, that they offer as being part of a union, but there’s a price that’s paid for all of that.
It’s the same sort of thing with, like a government that leans a little more socialist. They’re gonna collect a lot more in tax. And then have a lot more programs for everybody that’s based on all that money that they’ve collected. But the reality of it is who do you think pays for that?
At the end of the day, that’s gonna be the asset owner and then all of us as electricity rate payers who end up, the power purchase contract price is necessarily gonna be, more than what it might have been otherwise. There’s. There’s two sides to it. And yeah, you can, you can get unionized labor and their argument with joining the union was, safety training, access to safety training, access to benefits, things they weren’t getting either from vestus or independently.
But somebody’s gotta pay for it and it’s gonna be all of us
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Allen Hall: New research from the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific research in collaboration with offshore wind operators reveals that approximately 30% of annual wind turbine blade damage occurs during just 12 hours of harsh weather conditions.
The PROWESS project conducted. Year long, detailed measurements of precipitation in the North Sea, a pretty rough place finding that damage happens when the tip speeds reach about 325 kilometers an hour as wind speeds exceed about 63 kilometers an hour, which is pretty fast and rainfall surpasses about 7.5 millimeters per hour, which is a lot of rain.
Now, these findings have led to the creation of a erosion atlas in the. That could help wind farm operators proactively reduce turbine speeds to prevent damage. Now, I think that’s the goal everybody, is that if they know there’s certain environmental times when rain erosion is going to occur, then you basically slow the tip speeds down, which will reduce the amount of erosion.
Maybe I’m missing some of this. Rosemary, I know you’ve heard the same story that you can slow the tip speeds down when the rainfall is really high and the wind speeds are really high. And sure you can reduce the amount of erosion, but it’s still a problem.
Rosemary Barnes: And I haven’t seen this this atlas, is it just for the North Sea is is it just Europe?
Europe,
Joel Saxum: TTU was working on one to cover all of Europe.
Allen Hall: Yes, they were. Yeah, I haven’t seen it yet, but it maybe out.
Rosemary Barnes: One of the things that I’ve been working on. Recently with a few different clients is leading edge erosion in Australia. And just noting that we don’t see things behave the same way that they do in Europe.
And one of the reasons is, or that I suspect actually I don’t suspect, I know I’ve back backed up with data, that we have much higher rainfall intensity and a lot of places and. Australia. Like I just know that from living here. When I lived in Denmark when I moved to Denmark I checked the climate data before moving to see, things like, oh, what’s the annual rainfall and how does it compare?
And it wasn’t so different to a lot of parts of Australia. And in fact, it’s less than a lot of parts of Australia. I’m like, oh, okay, it’s not gonna be that bad. But when you actually live there, like in Australia, it rains and it rains. Like it’s not joking around. It is raining. But whereas when you.
In Denmark it’s just always drizzling, just I don’t know, definitely more than 50% of the time. It’s just it’s raining a little bit. And sometimes I would call it static rain. It’s it’s technically not raining, but if you go outside, you will get wet because it’s just there’s, it’s just there’s so much moisture in the air.
So I, and yeah, so I noticed. Then like a lot of the traditional ways to assess how severe your leading edge your site is for leading edge erosion. You have a look at you average wind speed, the tip speed of the blade and the annual rainfall of a site. And I just noticed I don’t know, I.
500 bill of rainfall in a year is not the same in Europe as it is in Australia. And not all Europe is the same. There are some places like in Scotland where they have like big fat, heavy rain droplets. But what was the amount that you said was the threshold? How, what was the rainfall intensity?
Allen Hall: No I think I said three inches in arrow.
That’s not right. I think it’s 0.3 inches an hour or 7.5 millimeters.
Rosemary Barnes: Okay. So I have I, I. I collected data for a bunch of Australian sites with their one minute. One minute rainfall record, or it’s like the average amount that they get every five years that will get in rainfall intensity of one in one minute of four, four millimeters in one minute.
So that’s like half of what you’re saying in an hour. We’re getting in a minute. So it’s 30 times, 30 times more. There are sites in Australia, they’re getting 30 times more than intense rain than that. So yeah, just I guess just look a little, another little bit of. Bit of evidence that Australia has in intense rainfall.
That’s why we have so much flooding. It just, it suddenly the tap turns on and you’ve got it’s the inverted ocean kind of situation where it’s just all of a sudden Yeah. Like above ground is wet now. It’s, yeah, it’s just water.
Joel Saxum: I thinking about that sometimes, like in, in Texas, the way it rains, like in Houston when it rains, like seven and a half millimeters an hour is nothing.
I’ve been in Houston before where they’ve gotten 10 inches of rain in an hour. That would be 250 millimeters in an hour. That’s 80, 80 times that.
Rosemary Barnes: That’s, so that’s what I mean. Maybe the numbers are wrong. We should probably, have all of read the paper and done some calculations before we started talking.
Allen Hall: There’s just two articles that say the same thing.
Rosemary Barnes: I, that’s that kind of like reinforces that Europe is the wrong place to do this study or to get this benefit, right? Like you get the benefit where because it’s only, it’s not. That huge amount of erosion that you’re gonna stop by, having that threshold in Europe, but like in Texas or in Queensland, you would be able to very easily cut out the extremely intense rain events I bet are doing way more.
’cause like I, I often see on Australia and wind farms erosion leading edge protection that is destroyed. A year after it was last replaced or two years after, and I bet that you could stop that by just turning the turbine off for the super intense rain. So I’ve been trying to convince clients to, to start looking at this.
It’s hard when the. My client, the owner of the wind farm, doesn’t actually control the operation of the wind farm. So that’s the biggest challenge isn’t the potential of a, technological capability to do it. It’s it’s a matter of who, who would go to the effort to doing this versus who gets the benefit from it.
Joel Saxum: There’s two interesting things here too just when I was looking at this leading edge erosion problem with rain mapping and stuff at a previous life. One of the things I didn’t think about right away is actually why it’s so bad is because as that turbine spins, you’re actually going this waterfall is measured in a single water column that hits, say, the ground.
Well, 7.5 millimeters an hour, but that turbine blade is experiencing like 15 times that because it’s chasing the rain down and then hitting it, going back up again and hitting. It’s in engaging with the rain constantly and that’s why it causes so much damage.
Phil Totaro: Yeah. Particularly a high tip speed ratio and it’s the almost like what you get on a helicopter rotor in, a brownout condition.
It’s
Joel Saxum: yeah. And we’re talking just rain erosion here, right? Like this whole, I just talked to an operator in West Texas an hour ago, and he said that sandstorm craziness that blew through there on Sunday hasn’t let up. He’s still at 45 mile an hour. Wind with sand blowing so fast, you can’t see across the o and m parking lot.
And this is in like by San Angelo.
Allen Hall: I saw that. Global Blade Group is over at Eros this week and they’re talking leading edge repairs for erosion and looking at the Eros robot and how they do it. And there’s a number of operators that are at Arons with that global. Playgroup and Berg junker. Obviously leading edge erosion is still a problem.
There hasn’t been a universal solution, but it does look like different parts of the world have different kinds of raindrops and maybe it’s a temperature aspect. Also, it’s definitely gonna be colder in Northern Europe and. Typically in Australia.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Another thing we struggle with in Australia is the UV here is so much more intense and so like a lot of things just don’t stay put or stay intact regardless of erosion.
You, if the adhesive degrades under you. UV of salt, then yeah, things don’t last because of that. So I would really love to see more erosion test facilities doing things like temperature cycling. That’s another thing. You get really hot, really cold temperatures here, much more than in Europe where it’s less diagonal variation.
Yeah, put a UV lamp in your facility and they look after us in Australia.
Allen Hall: GTU has a new rain RO facility in Ross Gilda. That facility, they can change the temperature of the water. It’s one of the variables they added to their rain erosion test facility, which plays into the result. I’m really curious about that because in the rain erosion testing that we have done over a number of years now, 15 plus years, you can tell the difference between cold water and warm water.
It is noticeable.
Rosemary Barnes: Oh, interesting. I think thermal cycling though, is a thing as well. Just even the yeah, the temperature of the blade heating up and cooling down every single day. I think that, that doesn’t help. There’s so much going on. We’ve seen these simple erosion site assessment maps that use like one or two parameters, and even this new study is, similar.
Just a couple of things, but it’s like that. You can find some good correlations, but it’s not like there’s a lot of ways to have a bad, there’s only one way to have a good site for erosion, which is to have, not much rain, small droplets, not high wind speeds. Oh, that’s not great for you.
Your site in general? No, no dust, no salt water. But any one of those things can be really bad. So it’s yeah, like making a map is really hard. You need to have like a series, I think a series of maps for looking at each parameter. And I don’t think that we have remotely figured out what all the parameters are that affect it, and then the next step is actually the testing for leading edge erosion products for leading edge protection products needs to include all of those parameters, which it currently doesn’t. It’s like basically that they’ll change the speed and the rainfall. The, yeah the speed of the rain, the how this volume of the rain and now we became, so there’s a facility that can change the temperature of the rain, but there are so many more things that we need to include before you can it’s one thing to know.
Yeah, like your product will perform under these conditions, but that’s not what in the real world. And nowhere in the world are we seeing leading edge protection perform in the way that the test results suggests that they should, which means it’s just currently wrong. Really need to get more in depth on erosion testing.
Joel Saxum: How much money do you think the wind industry has chased or spent testing LEP and trying to figure out this leading edge erosion problem? From grant funding and all these different things. ’cause I constantly see Alan. We were talking about this the other day about. How mu have, how have we not solved leading edge erosion yet we’ve hit this project and that project and this university and that grant funding and this EUDP thing and ORE catapult this.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And the OEMs are putting their own money into it too. They’re not just, waiting around for grant funding. It’s people being. Trying hard. I personally think that they’ve been too, it’s been too Eurocentric. The the research and development and, yeah. My company is too small to embark on a research program, but I’m so confident that we could do much, much better for Australian leading edge protection if we would do a proper test program that represented the, conditions that we actually face in Australia.
And that’s that, that’s true, not just for leading edge ion. There’s a whole range of. Things that we would get Australian Wind Farms performing way better if we would, do some of that development here. And I’m sure that Texas or some of the more extreme locations within the US is probably ex exactly the same.
And I know you do have some research organizations doing stuff over there, but yeah, I would really love to have a, give me a couple of million dollars and I will, I’ll solve this problem.
Allen Hall: Just call RD test systems and they will. Send over one of their latest and greatest rain erosion testers.
That’s the way to do it. That test equipment is outstanding. The issue is there’s so many variables that’s the problem, and you have to try to take them one at a time and solve it. And obviously Australia’s different than Northern Europe. It just is and Joel’s pointed out numerous times. It’s not necessarily the water, it’s what’s in the water a lot of times is dirt and debris, which is an abrasive and it changes everything really.
Everything. Plus yet on the UV amount of UV in Australia, and I agree with you, Rosemary Australia has aggressive sunlight. It does a lot more damage there than in Denmark. Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. OGs. Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive. Time consuming problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment in internal blade cracks.
OGs Ping has you covered The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health. Today. There’s big news off the shores of New Jersey Environmental Appeals Court Judge Mary Kay Lynch has ruled to remand a cleaner act permit issued to Atlantic Shores offshore wind.
Back to the US Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA filed a motion in February to review the Wind Energy projects, environmental impacts in response to. President Trump’s January memorandum to withdraw offshore wind leases for further review. Now, this setback follows shell’s withdrawal from the Atlantic Shores Project in January where the company reported a roughly $1 billion loss associated with the plan.
2,800 megawatt array off of Long Beach Island and Entine. Now, Phil, this permit. Poll is actually a result of a lawsuit which opened the door for the EPA to pull the permit. You wanna explain the logistics of this? So
Phil Totaro: effectively the lawsuit triggered a reevaluation of the the. Way in which the permit review was undertaken, the process that they followed.
And what the judge is effectively saying is that there was cause to uh, suggest that the process according to the EPA rules was not. Properly followed. And what that did is it allowed the EPA to pull the permit for a project that, I’m not sure if there was for knowledge of this.
And that’s why, ’cause you mentioned Shell pulled out EDF also pulled out, which was the other partner in the project. So it, the project, I don’t know if the project was already dead and they’re just putting a nail in the coffin or these companies pulled out because they felt like. This this ruling wasn’t gonna go their way.
But it’s. Concerning considering that, this was a process that was, done in a hurry at the end of, president Biden’s term where a lot of things, EPA reviews, Boeing reviews, a lot of permits were being issued for offshore wind to try and get things going.
The assumption being that if they had all those permits in place. They could just get on with business and get to building their projects. But it seems as though that’s not the case. And it, it’s, bad news for Atlantic Shores, which obviously seems dead now.
But there’s 19 gigawatts worth of other projects that are still, theoretically in the pipeline that could be built. And we’ll see if they actually get built.
Allen Hall: So that permit dealt with air pollutant emissions from the project during the pile driving construction phase, and its impact on the Brittin National Wilderness Area, which is just offshore of the coast of New Jersey.
Where they have limitations on air quality degradation. And my comment to Joel before we started the podcast was what kind of air quality pollutants are being emitted during pilot driving besides the ships? Driving the piles. Is there something else that I’m missing here? And would it matter all that much in the big scheme of things?
Joel Saxum: There’s two things, right? You have just the simple noise, pollution, right from boom. And some of times you have a little vibration in there, but that’s the only thing that happens there. And you can hear that a long ways away. But that’s not gonna affect anything. I’m not an EPA specialist, I’m not a noise specialist.
Maybe we should have Matthew Stead talk about this, but that, simple pounding is one thing, and that seems to be so minimal to me because, regular construction onshore is happening. It’s the guy’s putting a new roof on the house next door, pounding away, sounds like that, but it’s miles away.
And the other thing would be just emissions from the vessels that are out there. However, when you’re ve have a vessel out there for construction, it’s gonna be either one jack or one. A steady vessel doing pile driving, one work vessel and maybe a CTV or maybe a work boat. So maybe three vessels out there, max.
And if you’re managing it with a helicopter, maybe a helicopter. But it seems to me here that this is a, just a kind of a grab at some. Process problem and not an actual problem because it doesn’t seem like that’s an actual problem to me and either of these noise emission things.
Allen Hall: I actually looked this up, Joel.
It says the Brier wilderness area. Is a class one air quality area within the refuge, which protects it from manmade air pollution. And that means that they’re monitoring the air at that site all the time. Us Fish and Wildlife Surface is doing the monitoring there. But I assume there’s ships and all kinds of things just rolling right by there for emissions.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, that’s what it says. Okay, so tell ’em. They tell ’em they can’t have the vessel idled up when the wind is blowing east to west.
Allen Hall: That’s the weird part. What would the report have said that would, or what would’ve been in the report that was an error that would say there’s a lot of human made pollution landing on entine.
That, that doesn’t even make a lot of sense to me.
Rosemary Barnes: That’s gotta be shipping emissions. It’s not like it’s bringing up dust that escapes the earth’s, the, sorry, the water’s surface. How far is the wind site
Phil Totaro: from Entine? It’s a couple of miles. Yeah, it’s, no, it’s at least 10. If it’s in the shelf, there are 12 if it’s in the outer continental shelf.
But the look folks the real issue here. Is that this is what is likely to start happening more and more with any of the remaining wind farms, even if they’re under construction. Before, in, in Biden’s term, there were matters that were in the courts and they were getting dismissed because, the judges were, this isn’t supposed to happen, but the judges were being, told what to do.
The judge is theoretically supposed to rule independently, we all know how the system works. So nowadays they are, and the Justice Department used to be providing support to the defendants of all these kind of lawsuits. There have been lawsuits on vineyard, wind, there have been lawsuits on revolution on, pick every project you can name, and there’s been a lawsuit against it from one party or another.
Whether it’s Save the Whales or EPA or whatever. And the bottom line here is that this is what’s gonna be happening now in the new world order that we find ourselves in. They are gonna nitpick any stupid little thing in all of these little lawsuits that we’re getting tossed out before are gonna have legs.
Now
Rosemary Barnes: I’ve I’ve heard. Rumors that it’s potentially even more widespread than that, and not just offshore and things that are still working on permits, maybe projects that are already under construction. Like any kind of government involvement that you need, whether it’s just I don’t know, potentially even something as simple as you need a road closure to get some stuff on site.
That government departments are just simply not looking at those things. And so they just can’t progress. And I have heard that some developers considering maybe already have that, just putting a pause on anything that’s not started, pause it for four years so that, ’cause the worst thing is to get partway through a project and not be able to finish it.
Because then it’s gonna. It cost you more to restart it than it would be to just, pause it at the start. At least you can, start again from a clean slate and get everything done at once. So I think that, yeah, even though, like on the first blush of it, like there weren’t any executive orders or any, legislation that’s been passed that has.
On the face of it affected onshore wind all that much. I think that people are starting to realize that it could really slow that down as well.
Phil Totaro: Yeah, the only, so far, the only one that executive order that was passed for onshore was no renewable energy development on federal lands. That’s only affecting out of 32 or so gigawatts of wind energy in the.
Realistic project pipeline I’ll call it the stuff that’s actually likely to get built, that’s only gonna affect about six or seven gigawatts. It’s not an insubstantial percentage, but, at the end of the day, again it’s delaying things. It’s not totally stopping them.
But it’s concerning. In that offshore is much more expensive to develop, much more, time consuming to develop and whereas it was already a klugy process before, this is making it, a hundred times worse.
Joel Saxum: This week’s wind Farm of the week is the Dermot Wind Farm, which is owned by Osted, also called the Amazon Wind Farm.
So this thing was commissioned back in 2017 and commissioned in a special way. Jeff Bezos actually climbed to the top of a wind turbine and broke a bottle of champagne Oh. On one of the the attachment points up top. So he I’m hoping he was. Climb, safe, trained and everything to be up there as well.
But there was 110 GE 2.31 16 machines out there. It’s a 253 megawatt wind farm, and one of the focuses of this wind farm is a focus that if you pay attention to the energy markets, you’ve heard lately, there hasn’t been a huge spike in demand in energy in the United States. In the last 20, 30 years.
But now just in the last few and looking forward because of data centers and all these different things there, there is this forecasted spike of energy wanted. So thinking a little bit ahead of time, Amazon back in 2017 started investing in a lot of renewable energy projects. So this one is one of their 600 renewable energy projects across the globe right now.
Which is a pretty freaking large number. So this project has provided over $3 million in landowner payments and property taxes. And so it gives back to the local communities enough to power 74,000 homes annually. And it’s out by Abilene, Texas. So a little bit more about what Amazon is doing in the renewable energy space is they’ve invested over $12.6 billion.
Since 2014 in renewable energies. So the Dermot Wind Farm owned by Sted out in the central part of Texas. You are our wind farm of the week. I.
Allen Hall: That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. And thanks for listening. Please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News or substack weekly newsletter and register for that Sky Specs webinar.
You won’t wanna miss it. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
https://weatherguardwind.com/unionization-damage-atlantic-shores/
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CIP Offshore in Taiwan, RWE Buys GE Vernova for Texas
CIP achieves financial closure for an offshore wind project in Taiwan and the UK may shift towards a domestic offshore wind supply chain. GE Vernova plans to equip two RWE farms in Texas, and Masdar will potentially acquire TotalEnergies’ renewable assets in Portugal. Register for the start of our webinar series with SkySpecs!
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Allen Hall: Starting off the week, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has secured financial close on the 495 megawatt Fengmiao offshore wind project off Taiwan’s Coast. This Marks CIP’s third offshore wind project in Taiwan and is the first of Taiwan’s round three projects to start construction.
The project secured approximately $3.1 billion in financing from 27 banks with debt partially guaranteed by export credit agencies. Now Vestas will supply 33 of its latest 15 megawatt turbines for the projects and construction will finish by late 2027 with six corporate customers already signed for long-term power purchase agreements covering its entire capacity. Dan McGrail Interim, CEO of Britain’s new state owned GB Energy believes the UK should challenge oversee renewable energy companies by exporting its expertise globally. McGrail sees floating offshore wind as a huge opportunity for British technology leveraging existing supply chains from the oil and gas industry.
He aims to shift focus from importing parts to building them domestically, which could create an export industry over time. GE Vernova will equip two RWE farms in Texas with over 100 turbines with deliveries beginning later this year. The projects will help RWE surpass one gigawatt of rebuilt and repowered wind capacity across the US and generate enough electricity to power approximately 85,000 Texas homes and businesses annually. Boosting US content. Then the sales for the project will be manufactured at GE Vernova’s Florida facility, which employs about 20% Veterans.
RWE’s Chief Operating Officer emphasized their commitment to American energy production and strengthening domestic manufacturing and supply chains. GE Vernova’s Entre Wind Division currently has a total installed base of 56,000 turbines worldwide with nearly 120 gigawatts of installed capacity.
Abu Dhabi’s Masdar is considering acquiring a stake and total energy’s Portuguese renewable energy assets. The deal will likely be through SATA yield. The Green Energy Company masar purchased from Brookfield last year. This would add to MAs dollar’s growing European portfolio, which includes recent acquisitions in Spain and Greece as the company works towards its global target of 100 gigawatts by 2030.
Total Energy is currently has about 600 megawatts of installed renewable capacity in Portugal, mostly higher valued wind power assets. Total energy. CEO previously mentioned plans to divest around two gigawatts annually as part of portfolio consolidation. And that wraps up our wind industry headlines from Monday, March 24th. The conversation continues tomorrow on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, where we’ll explore even more insights shaping the future of renewable energy.
And don’t forget to join our exclusive live webinar this Wednesday featuring Sky Specs New CEO Dave Roberts. He’ll be sharing his roadmap for the company’s exciting future. All access details are awaiting for you in the show notes.
https://weatherguardwind.com/cip-taiwan-rwe-ge-vernova/
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